People love plants for many reasons, and at one end of the spectrum are those who value and collect them for scientific interest and at the other, those who take great joy in the structure of a garden, the mass … Continue reading
The Floating Gardens of Xochimilco (chimpampas) are just 25km (15 mile) from the historic centre of Mexico City, but as a mega-city of 22 million people, it can take over an hour to reach them. They have a delightful carnival … Continue reading
Although Cesar Manrique’s El Jardin de Cactus is his best-known landscape intervention, Jameos del Agua is his most spectacular. Visitors descend first into the large cavern-like café-restaurant, then zig-zag down a steep bank planted with shade-loving perennials into an astonishingly … Continue reading
Compared to its two neighbours, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, Lanzarote is considered a very quiet, perhaps rather dull place to go for a holiday. Fortuitously, It has escaped the excesses of tourism because of a unique partnership, between the internationally-renowned … Continue reading
Whilst visiting gardens in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, I decided I must make a pilgrimage to see his Piet Oudolf’s garden at Hummelo. He was a rising star in the garden world. It was early May, and in … Continue reading
Until a few years ago, the Hilltop site at the Royal Horticultural Garden at Wisley was a storage yard, an uninspiring glasshouse and a line of somewhat tired small show gardens. There was a small conventional vegetable garden nearby, and … Continue reading